“I Never Wanted To Be Famous"

I've never had any lofty goals with rap,” admits Seth Marton, who travels as Seth Sentry. “I never wanted to be famous. I never necessarily wanted money. So all really I wanted to do was just rap better than everyone else. That’s all I wanted, was that competitive drive to keep going. But, I am very aware that I’m in a good position and very lucky to be able to do shit that I was gonna do any way. So to be able to do this as a fulltime job is pretty cool.”

Prior to this interview, Marton was in a meeting where, so far, the 48th show was being tacked onto his Strange New Past national tour. All this for a Frankston, Melbourne MC with only one studio album? “Yeah, I don’t know what it is.” Despite his modest response, Australia’s love affair with him has been strong. His first EP, out in 2008, sold us on his story, 2012’s This Was Tomorrow let loose on his fantasy future and new album, Strange New Past, finds the rapper reminiscing in his own rear view.

"It’s a real competitive game you’ve got to push yourself. I feel like I was a lot more hungry on this album."

“That’s why I called it Strange New Past. I was doing a lot of looking back in retrospect and how that developed the person that I am. If you can process it and be at peace with your past then you can look back at yourself in a different and more positive way. You can look back and say ‘Ah, shit I wish I didn’t do that’ and live a life of regret or you can be, ‘Well if I didn’t do that shit then I wouldn’t be where I’m at now.’”

Right now, Marton’s only interest is in being in the competition of rap. On Nobody Like Me the MC goes to battle, pushing limits as a rapper. “I’m not in it for any other reason than to be a good rapper, to push myself and to own my craft. I’ve stepped it up a lot in terms of my rapping ability and I’ve worked hard to create new flows and be more dynamic in my delivery.

“This time, maybe it’s because I’m older or something, I started to do a lot of self-evaluation and going with my first instinct, I heard the beat and just went with it. It felt really good, it felt cathartic.”

Calls for Seth Sentry to stay the same are completely lost on Marton. “There’s no way I could write the same album again, doing it just for the sake of putting something out. That’s just not how I work. It’s a real competitive game you’ve got to push yourself. I feel like I was a lot more hungry on this album.”